Every programme has a launch day. The slide deck says “live”, the funder report says “deployed”, and the team that built the thing moves on to the next one. That is usually the moment the real work begins.
The first ninety days decide everything
In our experience across 60 districts, adoption curves don’t fail at launch. They fail in weeks six to twelve, when the novelty is gone, the first bugs have annoyed someone important, and the training has faded. A tool that 80% of frontline workers opened in week one is often down to 30% by week ten.
What turns that around is rarely a new feature. It is a person in the district who knows the tool, answers the phone, and fixes the three small things that make it annoying.
Launch is a milestone for the team that built it. For the people using it, it is day one.
What staying looks like
- A named owner per district for the first two quarters, not a helpdesk email.
- A weekly usage review that looks at who stopped, not just how many started.
- Fix budgets, not feature budgets: 20% of the build cost held back for the months after go-live.
- A handover date agreed at the start, so staying on has a finish line.
None of this is glamorous. All of it is the difference between a pilot that gets written up and a programme that is still running in five years.
